This blog was initially launched as a resource for Ron Mohring's Working Class Literature course. New poems are posted irregularly. All are welcome to share and comment on poems by and about work and the working classes. To suggest a poem for inclusion or a book for the recommended reading list, please email ron dot mohring at gmail dot com; put Working Class Poems in your subject line. Thanks.

4.08.2009

In the Light Factory

Half-moon of sweat, small hookof a scar, broken glassacross the burnt stone of a knuckle—this is Standard Electric Inc.Friday evening at 4:45.Soon you will stop making light

after eighteen hours at the mould,and the steady white circuit of sleepis all that will matter.Go home to bed, to dreamthe conduit crossing another life—beyond the surge and spark seared

against the back of your eyes—the direct current to fortune,an inheritance of industrial diamonds.Monday you will rise again,eat nothing, smokeand recall the names

for the delicate gauges of copperfilaments, your life slippingup a sleeve of high-tension wire,ampere of the blue sparkthat won’t stop tryingto make it all as bright as possible.